The thing to remember in any discussion about the proper "look" of Technicolor at any historical point is that one of Technicolor's biggest strengths was its flexibility in achieving any look the director and the director of photography wanted. It's entirely possible that "The Adventures of Robin Hood" originally had color values resembling those on the DVD. Ditto "The Garden of Allah". 20th Century Fox in the 1940s used the most garish Technicolor in films like "The Gang's All Here" and "Diamond Horseshow".
I've seen "The Adventures of Robin Hood" many times theatrically over the past thirty years (sorry, my original-run movie-going goes back to "The Alamo" and no farther...) and it's always had the lush, colorful look that we commonly attribute to classic Technicolor today. Scott MacQueen screened "The Garden of Allah" at a Cinecon about 5 years ago and while the picture is terrific eye-candy serving a dull story, the visual presentation was stunning, as is the DVD ....
... The bottom line is this: Technicolor has, from the beginning, been able to look pretty much any way you wanted it to.This is what the available evidence certainly seems to suggest, Rob. Nicely summated -- thanks for the info.
At 1:27:34, an automobile can be seen driving behind the trees, just as Will Scarlett gets off his horse to rescue Much.Well at least there are no people hanging from the trees!
DTS on LoA does not make tbe film, or its audio better. In the case of LoA DTS is used as a carrier for audio information. It works perfectly in that regard, replacing delicate and expensive magnetic tracks. There is no improvement.RAH,
Thanks for saying that. I always find it slightly curious when folks refer to DTS (or even DD for that matter) as "enhancing" the original sound quality.
Were we to have a perfect codec...and take the magnetic master or even an old optical soundtrack and encode it with DSD or 24/192 PCM...we would have a transparent digital encoding that faithfully represents the original....not anything "better".
Conversely, even an old optical soundtrack loses something to my ear with low bit-rate DD encoding. And those who have heard high-quality magnetic tracks know that they often sound better than 16/44.1 PCM!
Anyway...
Excited about getting this one (I bought the 3-pack)!!!!
-dave
This is the same point of view I took with the digitally cleaned Sleeping Beauty. While not something that characterizes all films, I do think, as you say, there are times when the artistic intent can be appropriately served by these techniques.For me, the most persistent problem with SB (and the reason I still haven't bought it) was the decision to reformat it in accord with reduction printing. Just as you've recently praised "opening" The Lion King to 1.66:1 to improve composition and offer the fully intended/captured animated images, so too Sleeping Beauty should have been transferred at ~2.2:1 to capture its full large format origins (eight perforation 35mm Technirama). By transferring it at 2.40:1 (the box says 2.35:1, but if it's the Panavision or CinemaScope spec, it'd be 2.39:1), Disney has recomposed the film. I'm a big believer in careful digital cleaning and improvements to color saturation/detail in keeping with reasonably certain artistic intent, as per above, but when a film is recomposed to a lesser standard (the reduction spec, rather than the original, large format spec), particularly a film specifically designed for large format (I'd make the same argument for any film shot large format, though), the purist in me goes into convulsions.
There's no particular reason my personal standards for this sort of thing should keep anyone else from buying and enjoying a film, and it isn't that I'm necessarily recommending others pass on the release as well ... but I just can't get past the reformatting of an image. Digital cleaning, sprucing up the color saturation, remixing the sound ... others balk at these, and I respect that dissent, but so long as values remain consistent with the original values, even if they don't mirror them, I don't really mind at the end of the day. Arbitrary and needless changes bother me more. But the elimination of picture area (here seemingly done simply to conform to the "standard" Scope spec, as one of the Disney execs said they actually scanned the film from 65mm restoration elements) ... that gets under my skin.
I'm still curious whether or not, in scanning their files back to film (if they've done so), Disney found it necessary to scan to four perf 35mm reduction because, despite originating with 65mm restoration, their resolution was just too low to support new large format elements. I'd guess they worked at 2K, and if so this might well be the case. If they worked at 4K or any combination of resolutions amounting to greater than 2K, it seems less likely a viable large format element could not be created. Robert Harris has mentioned elsewhere that a VistaVision element he's working on at the moment (also eight perforation 35mm) has responded very well to scanning at 6K and then re-scanning to film at 3K, for instance. But if Disney created their DVD transfer directly from digital files, rather than a re-scanned film element, there's no reason I can see why they could not maintain the full image area of original large format scans (dictating an AR of ~2.2:1), however "down-rezed" the transfer. In fact, if rescanning to four perf 35mm film, I'm not sure that it wouldn't have been wise to fit that 2.2:1 original area image into the 2.40:1 spec without cropping, thus leaving dead space to the left and right. The resultant image still lacks the definition of the original large format (it's still a reduction image, in other words), but at least it wouldn't lose image area.
Oh well -- that release has come and gone. But my mind sticks on these issues, and they ultimately stand in the way of my enjoyment of the film. With Robin Hood, as Rob (not Mr. Hood, the other Rob) explained very well earlier, and as I believed from available evidence all along, there's no concrete reason yet offered why the original prints could not have been timed similarly to the current DVD -- the potential was there in the 3-Strip negative, and the printing technology seems to have supported very lush timing schemes on the likes of The Garden of Allah and other films Rob and I named in the same time period (though only someone who attended showings in that time, or someone who has access to a general release print from the era free of fading and any serious decomposition, could presumably say with certainty). So ... I'm not worried. It sounds like a phenomenal release. But if it had been matted to 1.66:1 to take advantage of 16x9 formatting, I'd be furious! As would we all. While SB was issued in CinemaScope-compliant reduction during its run (so far as I've heard), that isn't how the film was designed, nor is it its original (and thus default or "truest") form. Because that truest form is achievable, and because it was decided not to achieve it ... well, there ya' have it.
But that's all afield of what you were saying, Dave -- I agree completely that a cleaned, carefully "improved" film print or DVD transfer, if in keeping with the potential of the original elements and the intent of the filmmakers so far as such can be reasonably determined, is often cause for celebration, rather than scorn.
It's all personal taste/priority, and I know with great certainty that I'm happy with discs with which others are not. To each their own, but I'll be waiting for an uncropped 2.2:1 edition of Sleeping Beauty! (Ado Annie and I will both do our immitation of a crawfish as we stubbornly await the passing of these temptations).
